(This is really in response to Peter Dalgaard, not to myself) > This seems to come from constructions of the form > > for i in $FOO : do .... ; done > > If $FOO is empty, then the resulting "for i in ;" is a syntax error > with some versions of bash and sh.
Given that one should generally be writing scripts for the Bourne shell, it is IMHO the case that "for i in ;" is a syntax error, period. > Current Linux versions of bash do not have that behaviour. ...violating Bourne shell compatibility in yet another way... > One workaround could be to upgrade bash. If R is to be an application that is not specific to (recent distributions of) Linux, one should expect and code for systems that may not have bash at all but only the Bourne shell. > Another workaround could be to safeguard the for-loop with > > test "$FOO" != "" && for i in $FOO : do .... ; done > > in all of the Makefiles where this can be an issue. That is one of the possible ways in which R developers could, I suppose, address the issue. -- Atro Tossavainen (Mr.) / The Institute of Biotechnology at Systems Analyst, Techno-Amish & / the University of Helsinki, Finland, +358-9-19158939 UNIX Dinosaur / employs me, but my opinions are my own. < URL : http : / / www . helsinki . fi / %7E atossava / > NO FILE ATTACHMENTS ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
